As the CEO of Oppenheimer Group, Inc., Stephen Robert also is the co-founder of the Source of Hope Foundation, which is dedicated to poverty relief. A chancellor emeritus of Brown University, Stephen Robert is a significant benefactor of the institution.
Recently, Brown University unveiled the Stephen Robert Hall part of the University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Located at 280 Brook Street, the hall was designed by architect Toshiko Mori. It features a light-filled 1,400-square-foot “agora,” a common space where students, faculty, and staff gather for intellectual and social exchanges. With more than 3,600 square feet of study space available, the Hall supports the Watson Institute’s goal of fostering an integrated and inclusive community of scholars who work on addressing global policy challenges. Aside from constructing the new common space, the Institute has applied recent donations to fund new faculty positions, establish three new undergraduate concentrations, and revamp the master in public affairs program.
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A journalist with a background in finance, Stephen Robert has written articles for a variety of leading national publications. As a financial commentator for Forbes magazine, Mr. Robert wrote a piece entitled “The Fed’s Japanese Mistake Kicks Working People in the Teeth,” in which he offered his opinion about the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise inflationary expectations, while driving down long-term interest rates. Stephen Robert warned in his article that such a decision could slow the nation’s economic recovery from the 2008 financial crisis and help to spur speculation in the commodities market, which could become the next asset bubble. These concerns echoed an earlier piece Mr. Robert wrote for the website The Daily Beast called “Don’t Repeat Japan’s Mistake.” In this article, Stephen Robert suggests that the Treasury Department would be better off handling the ’08 crisis in a manner similar to the way it dealt with the savings-and-loan crisis of the early ’90s, instead of handling the situation like the Japanese did during their own financial crisis in the ’90s.
Stephen Robert has also written several articles about the ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel. For the political magazine The Nation, Mr. Robert’s article, “Apartheid on Steroids,” discusses his own experience as a Jew returning to the Holy Land and his disappointment at what he personally witnessed in the West Bank. Mr. Robert describes the dire conditions faced by Palestinians living in the West Bank and concludes the article by expressing his hope that President Obama will lead an effort to unite the two warring groups in a two-state solution. Stephen Robert readdresses this issue in an article he wrote for Ha’aretz, the oldest newspaper in Israel, entitled, “Can Moral Nations Abandon Palestine?” Here, Mr. Robert argues that the U.S. has lost moral standing in the eyes of the world by not publicly condemning Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people. When not writing, Stephen Robert spends time working with his humanitarian organization, Source of Hope Foundation. A financial expert and philanthropist, Stephen Robert and his wife founded Source of Hope Foundation. Since its establishment, The Source of Hope Foundation has been active in nations such as Colombia, Haiti, Ethiopia, Malawi, Uganda, Israel, and Palestine. Under the Roberts’ leadership, the foundation provides assistance to communities lacking resources such as health care, education, water, food, and micro-financing opportunities. In addition to sending much-needed resources to struggling communities abroad and in the United States, Source of Hope Foundation also provides relief for those affected by natural disasters. Stephen Robert and the organization continue to research better methods for delivering humanitarian assistance.
In addition to his work with the foundation, Mr. Robert serves as a Trustee of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital and a former Board member of the New York Philharmonic and WNET’s THIRTEEN, a leading local television station. Stephen Robert began his career more than 40 years ago. Starting as a portfolio manager of the Oppenheimer Fund in 1968, Stephen Robert became President of the Oppenheimer Group in 1979 and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in 1983. In 1997, he sold the Oppenheimer Group to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. In 2005, Mr. Robert joined Renaissance Technologies Corp. as Chairman and CEO of its subsidiary, Renaissance Institutional Management. He was a member of the parent company’s executive committee, as well. In 2008, Stephen Robert left Renaissance to focus on his philanthropic activities on a full-time basis. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Stephen Robert has supported the organization by leading numerous study groups. For almost a decade, Mr. Robert served as Chancellor of Brown University and has been a Trustee or Fellow of the University since 1984. He also offers his time an overseer at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown. Originally posted on The Daily Beast on 03/17/2009
We know how to fix banks. We did it the 1990s. So why aren’t we taking that approach again? The Japanese way or the American way? That’s the choice now confronted by the Obama administration as it tries to stabilize our financial system. Unfortunately, it seems to be making the wrong choice, which could have disastrous consequences. As is now well-known, by refusing to recognize the dire condition of Japan’s banks until the late 1990s, Japanese policy makers prolonged their country’s malaise and made economic recovery more difficult. When the US government took over scores of S&Ls in the 1990s, the cost to the taxpayers turned out to be only about 20 percent of what was predicted. In the same decade, things were done dramatically differently in the US, when many savings and loan associations failed, and in Sweden. In both cases, the government quickly took control of the banks, cleaned up bad assets, and returned the banks to private ownership, a strategy that resulted in shorter and far less severe economic declines. Sweden had to choose between hoping its banks could earn their way back to solvency or taking them over for a brief period. The Swedish government decided that the former path was too dangerous because it could be lengthy or things could get worse—something that with each passing day may now be dawning on the new Obama administration. In the US in the early 1990s, the government set up the Resolution Trust Corp. to deal with the toxic assets infecting the balance sheets of failing S&Ls. This time around, however, the US Treasury Department appears to be veering toward the problematic Japanese approach. In the case of Citigroup, for example, the Treasury and other investors have converted part of their preferred stock to common equity at a price about three times the current market. So the government, which now owns 36 percent of the bank, now has no dividend and a more junior security. Citi has more tangible common equity, but not enough, especially after deducting deferred tax assets that may never be utilized. No toxic assets have been removed from Citi’s books, making more writedowns and government assistance highly likely. Indeed, the two major ratings agencies, Moody’s and S&P, lowered Citi’s credit rating after the government’s new deal was announced. (Within a couple of days, Citi stock was selling for less than $1 a share, down 95 percent over the past year.) Private capital is unlikely to invest, given the continuing uncertainty about the real value of Citi’s assets. This strategy amounts to nothing more than the old “kick the can down the road and keep walking” approach so typical of government bureaucracies. Unless the Treasury changes course, the estimated $2 trillion of toxic assets on US banks’ balance sheets will be clogging our credit system indefinitely. Another key aspect of the government’s plan, the Treasury’s bank stress tests, only adds to the worry. For starters, the tests are administered by the banks themselves, and stress testing is a highly imprecise art, as is evident from the bank’s own failure to predict their loan losses over the past 18 months. The economic assumptions behind the stress-test scenarios are also suspect. The Treasury Department says the banks should assume GDP growth of 0.5 percent to 2 percent in 2010, hardly a worst-case scenario. And finally, the implementation of the post-stress test rescue plan is also flawed. To receive government funds, a bank will be required to increase its lending by an agreed amount, another failed tenet of the Japanese bailout. Banks need to lend to creditworthy borrowers, not just to meet arbitrary government mandates. It is just those lending policies that contributed to the subprime mortgage crisis and the implosion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Instead, the government needs to create a new Resolution Trust Corp. The new RTC would immediately take control of banks that would be insolvent if their assets were valued at the price that could be received today, just as the old RTC took over failed S&Ls. The new RTC could then sell the toxic assets or hold them. At the same time, the new RTC could extinguish all or part of the current equity and funded debt of the failed institution and replace boards and officers, if desired. It is just not credible that the same boards and managements that created this fiasco in the first place be given the job of repairing the damage. The banks would then be “clean,” and private capital would surely invest, as the franchises are valuable, particularly those with large bases of deposits. This will return us to a healthy banking system capable of increasing lending and fueling an expanding economy. This bank-cleansing process could happen relatively quickly. IndyMac, seized in late 2008 by the FDIC, is already in the process of being returned to private ownership. Washington Mutual, another recent ward of the government, was restructured and quickly sold to JP Morgan Chase. Nor does the government have to get in the position of trying to manage these institutions over an extended time period, something critics have argued, probably correctly, that it is incapable of doing. The government can, and often has, financially restructured banks and changed boards and managements before privatizing them once again. And there is another hopeful precedent to proceeding in this fashion: When the US government took over scores of S&Ls in the 1990s, the cost to the taxpayers turned out to be only about 20 percent of what was predicted. The US is now at a crucial tipping point, but it’s not too late for the Obama administration to change course. The “N” word—nationalization—upsets many Americans, who see it as a path to socialism, and some in the administration appear fearful of taking this kind of bold action. But nobody seriously believed that the US was taking a step toward socialism when the original RTC was created. And as we’ve seen before, government ownership only needs to be for a short time, until the government prepares the banks for a return to private ownership. Let us not jeopardize the trillions of dollars we are spending to end this malaise by leaving our banks frozen by their toxic assets. Stephen Robert joined Oppenheimer & Co. in 1968 as a portfolio manager of the Oppenheimer Fund. He became a member of the Executive Committee and Director of Research in 1977. In 1979, Mr Robert became President of the firm and in 1983, assumed the role of Chairman and CEO. From 2005-2008 he served as Chairman and CEO of Renaissance Institutional Management LLC. Based in New York, Stephen Robert guided the Oppenheimer Group, Inc., as CEO and chairman for many years. Joining Oppenheimer & Co. in the the 1960s, he served as Oppenheimer Fund portfolio manager. Stephen Robert accepted a position with the firm as president in 1979 and became its principal owner in the mid-1980s through a management buyout. In 1997, he engineered the firm’s sale to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
Mr. Robert and his wife, Pilar, currently focus their efforts on philanthropic activities such as Source of Hope Foundation which they founded together. The organization assists under-resourced populations throughout the world in obtaining basic necessities such as clean water, food, and medicine. Self-sufficiency is also encouraged through micro-finance initiatives. Funded by the couple and Source of Hope Foundation, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital’s Stephen Robert and Pilar Crespi Robert Rapid Medical Evaluation Center was dedicated in 2015. Encompassing 8000 square feet, the facility, situated within the hospital’s emergency room, enables nearly immediate diagnosis and helps to expedite emergency care. |
AuthorThe former owner, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. Archives
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